Eventually, the butterfly issues a warning that her kind have been herded to a far away land by a creature known as the Red Bull. She continues to search for other unicorns.

During her journey, she is taken captive by a traveling carnival led by witch Mommy Fortuna, who uses magical spells to create the illusion that regular animals are in fact creatures of myth and legend.

The Unicorn finds herself the only true legendary creature among the group, save for the harpy, Celaeno. Schmendrick, a magician traveling with the carnival, sees the Unicorn for what she is, and he frees her in the middle of the night.

The Unicorn frees the other creatures including Celaeno, who kills Mommy Fortuna and Rukh, her hunchbacked assistant. The Unicorn and Schmendrick continue traveling in an attempt to reach the castle of King Haggard, where the Red Bull resides.

When Schmendrick is captured by bandits, the Unicorn comes to his rescue and attracts the attention of Molly Grue, the bandit leader's wife.

Together, the three continue their journey and arrive at Hagsgate, a town under Haggard's rule and the first one he had conquered when he claimed his kingdom.

A resident of Hagsgate named Drinn informs them of a curse that stated that their town would continue to share in Haggard's fortune until such a time that someone from Hagsgate would bring Haggard's castle down.

Drinn goes on to claim that he discovered a baby boy in the town's marketplace one night in winter. He knew that the child was the one the prophecy spoke of, but he left the baby where he found it, not wanting the prophecy to come true.

King Haggard found the baby later that evening and adopted it. Molly, Schmendrick and the Unicorn leave Hagsgate and continue toward Haggard's castle, but on their way they are attacked by the Red Bull.

The Unicorn runs, but is unable to escape the bull. In an effort to aid her, Schmendrick unwittingly turns the Unicorn into a human woman.

Confused by the change, the Red Bull gives up the pursuit and disappears. The change has disastrous consequences on the Unicorn, who suffers tremendous shock at the sudden feeling of mortality in her human body.

Schmendrick tells the unicorn that he is immortal and that he cannot make real magic unless he is mortal, and encourages her to continue her quest.

The three continue to Haggard's castle, where Schmendrick introduces the Unicorn as "Lady Amalthea" to throw off Haggard's suspicions. They manage to convince Haggard to allow them to serve him in his court, with the hopes of gathering clues as to the location of the other unicorns.

Haggard eventually reveals to Amalthea that the unicorns are trapped in the sea for his own benefit, because the unicorns are the only things that make him happy.

He then openly accuses Amalthea of coming to his kingdom to save the unicorns and says that he knows who she really is, but Amalthea has seemingly forgotten about her true nature and her desire to save the other unicorns.

Following clues given to them by a cat, Molly, Schmendrick, and Amalthea find the entrance to the Red Bull's lair.

When the Red Bull attacks them, Schmendrick changes Amalthea back to her original form. At this moment, Schmendrick joyfully becomes mortal.

Fueled by anger and sorrow, the Unicorn drives the bull into the sea. The other unicorns are freed, and they run back to their homes, with Haggard's castle falling in their wake.

As the castle falls, its wreckage dissolves into mist before it even hits the ground, and nothing remains to indicate that a castle had ever been there.

Now king after Haggard's death, he attempts to follow the Unicorn despite Schmendrick advising against it. The Unicorn returns to her forest.

She tells Schmendrick that she is different from all the other unicorns now, because she knows what it's like to feel love and regret.

Schmendrick and Molly leave this story into another as they sing a love song together. It took Beagle "close to two years" to write The Last Unicorn , and he states that "it was hard every step of the way".

Beagle came up with the idea for the novel in while on an "artistic retreat" in Berkshire Hills after Viking Press rejected his novel, The Mirror Kingdom.

He stated that though the idea for the novel was "just suddenly there", he also said that he had "read tons of fantasy and mythology" from childhood, and that his mother told him that he had shared a story about unicorns during a visit to one of the elementary school classes she taught.

He also mentioned that he loved the book The Colt from Moon Mountain by Dorothy Lathrop a story about a unicorn in Kansas as a child, and that Spanish artist Marcial Rodriguez had given him a painting of unicorns fighting bulls when he was seventeen.

Once he had the idea, he did research on unicorns at the Pittsfield Library. The page manuscript that Beagle first wrote differs greatly from the current version of the book.

Though the unicorn "is much the same", the story is set in modern times, and the unicorn is accompanied by a two-headed demon named Webster and Azazel.

This original version was published as a limited edition hardcover by Subterranean Press titled The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version in A corrected, definitive English-language text was prepared for the Deluxe Edition and used also in the trade paperback 40th Anniversary Edition Roc Books , In , Beagle recorded an unabridged audiobook of his novel for Conlan Press.

The audiobook is sold in three formats with varying prices. Purchasers of this edition were to be sent a free autographed 3,copy limited hardcover edition of Two Hearts.

It is slated to ship after Conlan Press can get enough "private funds" to manufacture them. Learning from Billion-Dollar Startups," she looked at software startups founded in the s and estimated that only 0.

Lee also argued that the first unicorns were founded in the s, Alphabet Inc. Many unicorns were born in the s, though Facebook Inc.

FB is the decade's only super-unicorn. Since the publication of Lee's article, the term has become widely used to refer to startups in the technology, mobile technology and information technology sectors usually at the intersection of all three with very high valuations questionably supported by their fundamental finances.

Others argue that the large number of companies with high valuations is a reflection of a new wave of technologically driven productivity, similar to the invention of the printing press nearly years ago.

Still others argue that globalization and the monetary policy of central banks since the Great Recession have created great waves of capital that slosh around the globe on a hunt for unicorns.

Unicorns, far from being merely mythological creatures, have become a regular feature in popular business and finance discussions.

Fortune magazine, for example, has created a list with more than entries of current unicorns. Startup capital is money required to launch a new business, whether Series B financing is the second round of financing for a business The increasing exposure taken by U.

It seems inevitable that the throng of unicorns that have ruled Silicon Valley will become gradually thinner over the coming months.